That was the dire warning to Richmond Vale woman Lorraine Moss, who had been held at bay in her front yard, refusing to leave her two horses behind as fire threatened her property.

“I don’t leave without them,” she told Fairfax Media in a dramatic few moments on Wednesday afternoon. “Where would I go?”

In the end, the horses decided for her.

A helicopter that landed nearby spooked them to the point they crashed through the front gate, rearing up until they were calmed by their owner and walked away from the danger zone down Richmond Vale Road, which at this stage was covered in an eddying smoke.

Ms Moss, like dozens of other residents in Richmond Vale and Black Hill, were lucky.

They escaped danger.

But Wednesday’s 800-hectare fire, which was fanned by erratic winds in an area that some residents say is the driest it has been in 15 years, showed no mercy on others.

The Richmond Vale Rail Museum, on Leggetts Drive, was undoubtedly the hardest hit.

Volunteers were visibly upset when they arrived at the site, parts of which were still on fire, about 1pm.

The museum’s chairman, Peter Meddows, estimated the damage bill would run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The museum holds key items belonging to the Lower Hunter’s rich industrial history, but many of those rail relics – including whole carriages, wagons and a kilometre worth of track – are expected to be written off after fire tore through the back of the site in the early morning.

“It breaks your heart,” Mr Meddows said.

“The sheer amount of work that goes into this place, and it’s just gone up in smoke from some idiot.

“It’s the worst we’ve seen since ’94.”

Mr Meddows was furious at reports that the Richmond Vale blaze initially started as deliberately-lit car fire.

"When you see this, you get pissed off because it all could have been avoided,” he said. “That's what upsets you.”

As the fire showed no sign of letting up in some pockets of Richmond Vale, residents who lived outside the danger zone went from property to property to help their neighbours move livestock.

And firefighters remained on the ground until well into the night, guarding homes against flare-ups brought about by wind conditions that proved a consistent challenge.

Intense fire a sign of what’s to come

AUTHORITIES have warned that a fire that raged uncontrolled on Wednesday is just the beginning, sending an ominous signal ahead of the Hunter’s official bushfire season.

Residents in fire-prone areas – particularly in Coalfields towns – are being told that they need to be ready from now until summer and that indifference could be deadly.

It comes as investigators work to determine a cause for the Richmond Vale fire, which spread to 800 hectares by Wednesday afternoon, but it is widely believed to have started from a car fire which was reported to emergency services on Tuesday.

The Black Hill fire, which forced nearby Black Hill Primary School to evacuate, is also under investigation.

“It is worrying that it is so early in the year, but hopefully it will mean it is not going to be such a threat later on,” Kristen Boyle said.

“It does make you worried,” said another.

The Hunter’s bushfire season traditionally starts in October, but has been brought forward by a month due to a dry winter. Fairfax has previously reported that Hunter firefighters were facing the worst fire conditions in a decade.